1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a low voltage linear output buffer operational amplifier. This invention further relates to a low voltage linear output buffer operational amplifier capable of driving variable resistive and capacitive output loads.
2. Brief Description of the Related Technology
Typically, a class A operational amplifier includes a reference current in the output stage, which is configured as either a source or a sink. The class A amplifier typically modulates the gate of a MOSFET transistor or the base of a bipolar transistor to modulate the amplifier output voltage. This configuration is typically referred to as a two-stage class A operational amplifier. Class A MOSFET operational amplifiers are problematic since they inherently have difficulty maintaining stability over a wide range of resistive and capacitive loads.
Several known methods of compensating this instability are:
(1) Pole splitting/Miller compensation methods; PA1 (2) Pole zero compensation; and PA1 (3) Pole splitting with feed forward blocking techniques.
Other techniques are known to those in the art.